Except for Wdnesday, last week was a pretty good week. On Friday, after meandering back and forth across the flat line, the last minute upside surge on the heaviest volume of the day was especially encouraging. This week there are two stocks on the list that are buy candidates, AAN and MFE. They’re not the best stocks on the list, but they are on the list and in technical buy range.

For the first time after a recent technical breakout, AAN pulled back and found support at its 50 day moving average. This is a secondary buying opportunity with a buy range of between $31.40 and $36.97. Obviously, since it’s okay to buy anywhere within the range, a lower price is better. AAN closed Friday at $32.57 so I preliminarily set a limit order at $32.50. I’ll be paying attention to how the stock and the markets look to open Monday and play it by ear. In any case, if you want to buy AAN here, you probably want to buy it either Monday or Tuesday so you’ll be holding it on Wednesday, which is the ex. dividend date for the next dividend (a whopping .0170/share), payable on 07/06/09.

MFE has formed a cup with handle pattern with a $41.04 buy point. The stock is currently trading at $39.23. I set a stop limit order with a $41.04 stop and a $41.15 limit, which means that if MFEdoes break out, I hope to fill my order somewhere between $41.04 and $41.15

OK, take a deep breath. You might need it after we tell you this: You now owe more than half a million dollars, not counting your home mortgage, credit cards and other debt. Don’t remember running it up?

Well, technically, you didn’t. The government did it for you. And USA Today has done us all a favor by taking out a calculator and doing the basic math. It’s beyond ugly.

Each household owes an additional $55,000, thanks to the soaring spending by the federal government on retirement programs just in the past year.

All told, each household at the end of 2008 owed $546,668. That’s four times what American households owe for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other debt.

Looking long term is where it really gets scary. Recently, we learned the U.S. had $101 trillion in retirement and health care obligations over the next 75 years. The only problem is, at current tax rates we’ll have only $53 trillion to pay for it all.

That leaves a gaping hole of $48 trillion.

It gets worse. The stimulus plans and bailouts pushed into the budget by President Obama and congressional Democrats will add $9 trillion to our national debt over the next 10 years alone.

Add to that an expected $1.1 trillion spent over the same time to fund a government takeover of our health care system — an estimate most health care experts, by the way, believe is laughably low — and you have the makings of an epic financial tragedy.

Total federal debt will soar from 41% of GDP to 82% in just 10 years — more debt than we rang up in 235 years of existence. And over the next half-century, Americans will owe $63 trillion — 4.5 times our current GDP of $14 trillion.

“We have a huge implicit mortgage on every household in America,” David Walker, former U.S. comptroller, told USA Today. “Except, unlike a real mortgage, it’s not backed up by a house.”

Americans can’t be blamed for hyperventilating when they see such numbers emerging from the most fiscally irresponsible government in our nation’s history.

Even the nation’s president, in a moment of unguarded frankness last week, admitted that “we are out of money.”

Was that supposed to inspire confidence? Or was it merely a prelude to asking for a spate of new taxes to pay for it all — turning the U.S. economy from a vibrant, job-creation machine into a stagnant, European-style welfare state?

The current administration already has proposed or is mulling as many as 10 new taxes — everything from a European-style VAT (a national sales tax) to intrusive new taxes on beer, fast food, cigarettes and other sinful indulgences, to cap and trade, which is nothing more than a federal tax on energy.

Two weeks ago, Standard & Poor’s warned Britain it could lose its AAA rating because its national debt will soon hit 100% of GDP. Well, guess what? We’re heading down the same road. A story in the usually staid Financial Times of London last week said it all: “Exploding Debt Threatens America.”

More brutal was last week’s assessment of Russia’s Pravda, the former house organ for the Soviet communist regime: “The American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed.” Ouch.

We’d like to disagree, but at least one of those newspapers is right. And unless we Americans stand up and tell our elected officials to stop this insane surge in spending and taxing, we’ll pay for it for decades to come.

Seriously, we can’t afford to keep spending like this! The politicians in Washington must know that this financial predicament will literally break the back of the United States sooner rather than later at this rate of uncontrolled spending, but they’re either oblivious or don’t seem to care. Even Obama has recently said that this debt load is “unsustainable” and that “we’re out of money now“. But he doesn’t seem to care either. Hell, he’s off to New York for a Broadway “date” with his wife at taxpayer expense. You may as well tack your share of that cost to your bill too.

The Chinese and the rest of the foreign U.S. debt holders around the world know all to well how deep the debt hole is that we’ve dug for ourselves and they’re getting nervous. Unless the United States does something drastic, and does it soon, our debt holders will eventually quit enabling our reckless fiscal behavior and stop buying our debt cold turkey. If and when that happens, the U.S. economy will quickly collapse like a house of cards on top of the U.S. taxpayers and any semblance of a standard of living we once enjoyed. How’s that for something to look forward to?

/of course, the critical and sobering question is, how are we going to save ourselves, who’s going to step up, how are they going to step up, and when are they going to step up?

Charges brought against three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense under the Bush administration have been dropped by the Obama Justice Department, FOX News has learned.

The charges stemmed from an incident at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008 when three members of the party were accused of trying to threaten voters and block poll and campaign workers by the threat of force — one even brandishing what prosecutors call a deadly weapon.

The three black panthers, Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint in the final days of the Bush administration with violating the voter rights act by using coercion, threats and intimidation. Shabazz allegedly held a nightstick or baton that prosecutors said he pointed at people and menacingly tapped it. Prosecutors also say he “supports racially motivated violence against non-blacks and Jews.”

The Obama administration won the case last month, but moved to dismiss the charges on May 15.

The complaint says the men hurled racial slurs at both blacks and whites.

A poll watcher who provided an affidavit to prosecutors in the case noted that Bartle Bull, who worked as a civil rights lawyer in the south in the 1960’s and is a former campaign manager for Robert Kennedy, said it was the most blatant form of voter intimidation he had ever seen.

In his affidavit, obtained by FOX News, Bull wrote “I watched the two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters.”

He also said they tried to “interfere with the work of other poll observers … whom the uniformed men apparently believed did not share their preferences politically,” noting that one of the panthers turned toward the white poll observers and said “you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”

A spokesman for the Department of Justice told FOX News, “The Justice Department was successful in obtaining an injunction that prohibits the defendant who brandished a weapon outside a Philadelphia polling place from doing so again. Claims were dismissed against the other defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law. The department is committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who intimidate, threaten or coerce anyone exercising his or her sacred right to vote.”

Sources told The Bulletin that there is internal dissension in the Department of Justice (DOJ) about a voter intimidation case from last year’s presidential election. Obama appointees did not want to proceed with the case, while the career prosecutors did. The incident occurred in Philadelphia and involved the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (NBPPSD).

The DOJ filed a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act against the NBPPSD and three of its members alleging the defendants intimidated Philadelphia voters during the Nov. 4, 2008 general election. The action was filed in January before President George W. Bush left office.

The complaint, filed in the United States District Court in Philadelphia, alleged that on Election Day, Nov. 4, 2008 in Philadelphia, NBPPSD members Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were stationed at the entrance to a polling location at 1221 Fairmount Avenue, wearing the uniform of the organization. It also states Mr. Shabazz repeatedly brandished a “police-style baton weapon.”

The complaint said NBPPSD Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz confirmed that the placement of Messrs. Shabazz and Jackson was part of a nationwide effort to deploy NBPPSD members at polling locations on Election Day. The Justice Department sought an injunction to prevent any similar future actions by NBPPSD members at polling locations.

“Intimidation outside of a polling place is contrary to the democratic process,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Grace Chung Becker at the time. “The Department takes allegations of voter intimidation seriously.”

None of the defendants responded to the lawsuit. Instead of immediately filing for a default judgment as is the normal procedure, sources told The Bulletin the DOJ asked for and received an order from the court providing an extension of time to file. Specifically, they asked the court to give them until May 15.

But on May 15, DOJ changed its mind again. Rather than a default judgment, the DOJ filed a notice of voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit for two of the defendants. This included Mr. Jackson, who identified himself to police as a member of the Democratic Committee in the 14th Ward. He also produced credentials to that effect.

DOJ only asked for a default judgment against one defendant, Samir Shabazz, which was granted on May 18. But sources say the proposed order for the default judgment asks for none of the usual conditions the Justice Department would want, such as keeping Mr. Shabazz away from any polling locations for a set number of years into the future.

Hans von Spakovsky is a former career Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. He thinks the inaction by the Justice Department is unprecedented. He told The Bulletin that the dismissal by Justice, with no notice on the Justice Department press site, particularly against an organization listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a horrible miscarriage of justice. He said DOJ has failed in its duty to enforce voting laws. He is outraged by the action.

“It is absolutely unprecedented for the Justice Department to dismiss a lawsuit after the defendants failed to answer the suit and are thus in default,” he said.

Mr. von Spakovsky said that the NBPPSD’s lack of response was the legal equivalent of an admission of all the allegations made about the defendants’ organized effort to threaten and intimidate voters.

“And dismissing an individual who was a local Democratic party official who defaulted by not answering the complaint smacks of the worst sort of political partisanship,” he said. “It is completely contrary to all of the promises that Eric Holder made when he was confirmed to be Attorney General.”

So, the career prosecutors wanted to proceed with the voter intimidation case but the Obama DOJ political appointees derailed it. Why doesn’t this even surprise me after watching Obama’s Chicago style machine operate for over two years now? It”s like, hey New Black Panthers, thanks for doing your part to help Obama get elected, just don’t do it again, okay? Hell, a wrist slap would have hurt more than a toothless injunction.

/I guess in ObamaWorld, it was just an excellent example of effective community organizing

President Obama received Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House today with a valuable welcoming gift: a toughly-worded, categorical US demand for Israel to stop settlements in Palestinian territories.

But hours before the two men met, the Israeli government flatly rejected the demand. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that “normal life in those communities must be allowed to continue,” meaning that some construction will continue in existing settlements.

Obama and Abbas appeared to see eye to eye, speaking of the need for increased support from Arab governments to support the peace process by showing good faith in their promise to recognize the existence of the Jewish state if Israel strikes a peace deal with Palestinians.

But nowhere was the confluence of views so striking as in the Obama administration’s position on settlements, which the president outlined directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week at the White House.

For starters, Obama keeps demanding that Israel stop settlmeent construction even after Israel has already repeatedly told him, in no uncertain terms, that that’s out of the question, not going to happen. And then, in another stab at comedy gold, Obama tells his new best buddy Mahmoud that Arab governments must promise to recognize the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Forget the other Arab governments recognizing Israel as a Jewish state for a minute, like that’s ever going to happen, what about Abbas himself? Gee, wasn’t it just a month ago that Abbas refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state?

So, what’s the point? Why does Obama keep engaging in this fantasy charade, pretending that Fatah/Hamas are the good guys and that Israel is the obstacle to peace for daring to insist on her own survival? Does he think he can perform some type of magical Obama Kabuki dance and change the ground truth? Instead of strong arming Israel, our strongest ally in the region, why doesn’t Obama demand that the designated terrorists behave like civilized people and recognize Israel as a precondition to negotiations?

/how can Israel possibly negotiate “peace” with those sworn to her destruction?

So, this pork packed $1 trillion, plus interest, “stimulus” bill just had to be passed immediately, before anyone could even read it, to save the economy from disaster. Well, it’s more than three months later, just how much of this urgently needed $1 trillion in “stimulus” money has actually been spent so far?

“Only a small part” of the nation’s $787 billion economic stimulus had been spent through the end of last month, according to congressional analysts, despite the Obama administration’s boasts Wednesday that the plan is a big success.

“One hundred days later, we are already seeing results,” President Barack Obama said during a visit to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

“Across America, recovery is under way,” Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement accompanying a 28-page progress report.

However, Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, was more cautious in his “State of the Economy” review to the House Budget Committee last week.

“The economy will stop contracting and resume growing during the second half of this year,” he said, “but the hardships caused by the recession will persist for some time.”

The CBO report found that through April only about $19 billion in stimulus funds has been spent.

Before the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (also known as the “stimulus bill”), President Obama and his chief economic advisor, Larry Summers, stressed that the government’s response to the economic crisis needed to be “timely, targeted, and temporary.” As predicted by a Heritage Foundation analyst,[1] the bill is neither timely nor targeted. Only time will tell if it is temporary.

Not Timely

Government agencies have spent only a tiny fraction of money planned to be spent in fiscal years 2009 and 2010. Moreover, agencies have not allocated most of the money that has been directed toward them for any named projects.

As of May 8, less than 8 percent of the spending scheduled for fiscal years ’09 and ’10 has taken place.[2] That 8 percent ($37 billion) had been spent almost entirely on Health and Human Services until the week of May 1, when $12 billion was spent in one week by the Department of Labor. Before the week of May 1, just 3.3 percent of scheduled ’09 and ’10 spending had occurred.

Of the $461 billion called for to be spent by the stimulus bill before the end of fiscal year 2010, just $37 billion has been doled out. Of that, $16 billion has been spent by the Health and Human Services department, $12 billion has been spent by the Department of Labor, and $6 billion has been issued in one-time payments to Social Security recipients. All of the other agencies combined have spent a total of $2.6 billion as of May 8.

Not Targeted

Fiscal year 2010 ends September 30, 2010, but the recession could end sooner than that. Indeed, a majority of economists surveyed in April predicted the recession will end in 2009.[3] Fed chairman Ben Bernanke also thinks the recession will end this year. The stimulus bill threatens to miss the very target it was meant to address.

Spending to fight an already-ended recession is unnecessary and wasteful. More diffusely, the specific spending programs targeted to fight the recession have mostly not been named.

Of the $461 billion of the stimulus bill the President’s budget blueprint says will be spent in fiscal years 2009 and 2010, just $102 billion has even been targeted for specific outlays by government agencies. Once again, a large amount of this sum is allocated by the Health and Human Services Department. Several agencies (such as the Agency for International Development, NASA, and the National Science Foundation) have yet to say how any of the billions of dollars granted to them by the act will be spent. Just 22 percent of the fiscal years 2009 and 2010 stimulus spending has been planned by government agencies.[4]

The New Keynesianism

The new Keynesian philosophy fashionable among Washington policymakers is that government spending can pull an economy out of recession–that government spending “injects” new demand into the economy, thereby increasing GDP.

But every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. Rather than add new demand, government spending merely redistributes existing demand. Even transferring money from savers to spenders will not add new demand, because nearly all savings are banked or invested and then quickly made available for someone else to spend. Simply put, Congress cannot create new demand out of thin air, and this explains the repeated failure of Keynesian policies.

No matter who’s doing the counting, it’s pretty clear that it’s been over three months now and hardly any of this desperately needed $1 trillion has even been spent yet, a drop in the ocean, spit in a bucket. Surely not an amount that anyone can seriously claim, with a straight face, is doing anything to “stimulate” the U.S. $13+ trillion GDP economy. And how has this trivial amount of Democrat pork spending been spent so far, what important uses has it been put to? Let’s ask Joe Biden.

Here’s a random sample of what your taxpayer money (borrowed, but you’ll have to pay for it eventually, with interest) is being spent on in the name of desperately needed “stimulus”:

Supporting Communities:17. Darlington County, South Carolina, will be the location of a new 4,200 square-foot library supported in part by $787,000 of Recovery Act Community Facility Grant funding. This new library, located in the town of Society Hill, will replace an existing 850 square-foot building, and provide for the informational, educational, and recreational needs of the 4,000 residents who live in the greater Society Hill area of Darlington County. Isolated from larger libraries by 17 miles in either direction, the Society Hill library supports junior and high school students research needs, as well as adults who use the library’s resources for help in locating jobs, for instructions on constructing a resume, and for submitting their resumes electronically.

Direct Farm Loans:18. With the assistance provided by a Farm Service Agency (FSA) USDA Stimulus Beginning Farmer operating loan, Chang Suhn Lee and his wife Soon Oak have been able to expand their farm in Coalmont, Tennessee, both keeping a family farm operating and keeping up with a growing demand for their crops. Combined with a USDA Direct Farm Ownership Loan the Lees received in 2007, they have expanded their vegetable farm from seven acres to 45 acres in 2009.

Direct Farm Loans:19. David and Katherine Pyle, both raised on dairy farms, recently sought to start their own diary operation and saw a classified advertisement to purchase cows and lease a dairy facility in Augusta County, Virginia. Working with the Farm loan team and using Recovery Act funding, the Pyles were able to work out a loan and started the lease on their new farm on April 1st. Using Recovery Act funds to purchase cows, breed heifers and provided start-up and operating capital, the Pyles now own and manage a growing dairy operation.

Direct Farm Loans: 20. Norman and Ida Layne, along with their son Avery, of Cullen, Virginia, received two direct operating loans supported by Recovery Act funds for their family dairy and hog farm. The combined loans will help support direct operating expenses of the farm, as well as prior fee, repair and veterinary expenses, and will allow the Laynes to be able to keep the family farm for their son. Without the assistance of Recovery Act funds, the Laynes would have had to sell the family farm.

Supporting Communities:21. Ecumenical Faith In Action, Inc., in Washington County, Virginia, is the recipient of $50,000 in Community Facility Grant funding through the Recovery Act. With this funding, Ecumenical Faith in Action will add approximately 5,300 square feet to its food-distribution center. Their existing facility does not have any walk-in freezers or coolers — or even a loading dock. All frozen food is stored in approximately 25 residential type chest freezers. The addition will help alleviate these problems.

Hey, there’s 95 more “projects”, most just as worthless. Read the whole thing. And remember, this pork spending is just barely out of the starting gate, there’s about $950 billion more to flush down the toilet on unneeded Democrat pet projects like this that we can’t afford in the first place. And has anyone noticed that, despite this non-stimulative, wasteful pork spending, the economy is starting to recover anyway and most economists predict that the recession will be over by the end of this year?

The end of the recession is in sight, according to a new survey of leading economists.

While the economy is showing signs of stabilizing, the recovery will be more moderate than is typical following a severe downturn, said the National Association for Business Economics Outlook in a report released Wednesday.

The panel of 45 economists said it expects economic growth will rebound in the second half of 2009. However, the group still expects to see a decline in second-quarter economic activity.

“The good news is that the NABE panel expects economic growth to turn positive in the second half of this year, with the pace of job losses narrowing sharply over the remainder of this year and employment turning up in early 2010,” said NABE president Chris Varvares in a written statement.

Almost three out of four survey respondents expect the recession will end by the third quarter of 2009, the report said.

But 19% predicted that a turnaround won’t come until the fourth quarter, and 7% said it may not come until early 2010. None of the panelists expected the recession to continue past the first quarter of next year.

Let’s recap. We had to have a $1 trillion pork spending bill shoved down our throats, before anyone could even read it, in order to pull the economy out of a deep recession. But, the tiny fraction of the $1 trillion that’s been actually spent so far, more than three months later, isn’t enough to “stimulate” the economy in any meaningful way and has been spent on a variety of Democrat pet project pork nonsense that we don’t need and had to borrow the money for. Furthermore, in spite of this wasteful spending, the economy is recovering all by itself, and the economic consensus is that the U.S. will be out of this recession in about six months!

Now, you may ask yourself, if the purpose of the “stimulus” was to pull the economy out of the recession and, despite the “stimulus”, the economy will be out of the recession before the end of the year, why the [expletive deleted] do we need to spend another $950 billion of borrowed money, that we’ll have to pay interest on, on shameful, useless pork?

Of course, the obvious answer is that we don’t. In fact, all this additional, unnecessary pork “stimulus” spending will do nothing besides massively increase U.S. deficits and debt, trigger higher interest rates and inflation, increase the size of government and crowd out private sector investment. In other words, it’ll be a huge drag on economic growth and the debt albatross we’ll soon have around our necks could conceivably break the U.S. economy itself. If Obama and the Democrat Congress had any honor or shame they’d immediately repeal all the unspent portions of the “stimulus” bill still in the pipeline, in the name of fiscal responsibility and the American taxpayer, generations present and future.

/but they won’t do that because stimulating the economy wasn’t their objective in the first place, Obama and the Democrats could care less about the economy or the taxpayers, what they’re after is raw power, an expanded government, and the votes to hang onto it in 2010

After what many consider to be a rather disappointing effort in Call of Duty 5: World at War, this time, acclaimed developer Infinity Ward is back at the designing helm for Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2, the sequel to the best-selling shooter of all-time, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Once again, nothing on this week’s watch list is currently within an acceptable technical buy range and that’s just as well. The markets are treading water, looking for a direction and last week, going into a long holiday weekend, market volume was way down. Let’s see where the markets go this week, stay cautious, and be ready to go short or buy index puts if that’s the direction, never fight the tape. As they say, better safe than sorry, patience is a virtue, and all good things come to those who wait.